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Casting Call is a card game designed by to Charleston natives and theater performers, Stephen Hawyard and Erin Murphy. One day Stephen got the idea to mix his two passions of gaming and theater together, so he got Erin to help with the design work. And now they are looking for help to fund their idea on Kickstarter.

The game is simple. You play as a Broadway producer trying to get your cast together by playing cards before your rivals can. Complete three Cast Sets which include Diva, Leading Man, Chrous members, and more. Other cards include Scottish Play, Understudy, and Break A Leg. The game plays from two to five and takes between half an hour to a full hour.

Rewards offered include getting your name on their Thank You page of their website, copies of the game, prints of the characters, illustrated poster of yourself as your favorite Broadway character, a deck of the game with you as a one of the character types, and a pizza party with one of the creators of the game.

They are currently at $1,730 of their $2,500 goal with 24 days left to go. You can help out some fellow West Virginians and get a nice simple quick game to play with friends.

Temporal Orbit Films LLC is a group of dedicated fans in Charleston of classic Doctor Who with years of experience in film and theater who have decided to create their own Doctor Who fan films, Doctor Who: The Classic Series Regenerated. To do this they are looking to raise money through Kickstarter.

Their current production is based around the 4th Doctor (played here by Ronn Smith) and Sarah Jane Smith (played by Rose Winland) era storytelling. Their first story will be “Season of Terror,” a Christmas Special style if it was done in the ’70s. The Doctor and Sarah Jane investigate a series of child abductions in a small English village and discover the terrifying truth to the alpine legend of Krampus, the Christmas Devil.

They are asking for $50,000 to fund this project at the quality they want. This will cover such costs as studio rental and monthly utility costs, set construction and materials, production equipment rentals, costuming, prop creation, cast and crew travel, post production costs, Kickstarter fees, taxes, and cost of rewards. All the money goes to production. This is a not-for-profit production, no one makes any money off this. Also they have no affiliation with the BBC other than being fans.

Rewards offered include PDF of script and poster, downloads of the episodes, soundtrack, DVD with extras, poster, t-shirt, Skype chat with the crew and cast, producer credit, walk on role, custom scarf, and more. Giving at least $5 will get yo a thank you on their website.

The have only raised $1,936 (of this writing) of their $50,000 with just four days to go. So if you want to see this come true, they need a lot of help. This is also a project that you can easily offer support outside of money if it makes the goal.

Fans of classic series Who should really think about throwing them a few dollars.

Lasso Games, a game design firm from Huntington, is running a Kickstarter to help fund their latest project Levantera, an 8-bit action/RPG inspired by games on the NES. They are looking for $25,000, but as of this writing only have $5,616 with only 13 days to go.

You play a ship’s captain in his quest to rescue his lost crew over several islands and various adventures in a non-linear fashion. Explore each landmass fully with its own visual style. Rebuild and enhance your ship. Fight and plunder other ships. Learn magic and new fighting skills. Enjoy a chiptune style soundtrack. They have a demo to download if you want to give it a try.

By pledging you can get your name in the credits, a digital copy of the game, a copy of the soundtrack, print of the cover art,your likeness in the game, exclusive access to the development forms and monthly builds, physical NES-style box of the game, printed instruction booklet,design an enemy for the games, design an island in the game, and more.

Their stretch goals at different levels are for them to add an OSX/Linux version, add two more continents, create an XBox One version, a PS4 version, and release the game in 2016 instead of 2017.

Lasso Games, LLC was founded in February 2015 in Huntington, WV. On July 17, 2015, Lasso competed in a 48-hour game jam competition called gm(48). The goal was to make a complete game start to finish in GameMaker:Studio. They won! Their entry: Highway Rampage is available for download.

Their team is composed of 8 members, each specializing in areas of game design, code composition, art/music, and web development. Their goal is to create fun and accessible games that are easy to understand, challenging, have depth of content, and are rich in expression.

Fans of old school games should give this project a look over and help out a dedicated WV based company.

Two different comic projects are up on Kickstarter now that you should check out and support.

The first one is Zombie Highway, a tale of the zombie apocalypse in West Virginia that Jason Pell, Roberto Viacava (Adventures in Superman) and Eduardo Bazan created over a decade ago (before Walking Dead and other zombie stories).

They are holding a Kickstart to produce a full hard cover 200 page collection of the series, most of which is out of print and hard to find, plus new material. There will be new coloring of formerly black and white pages and touched up art.

The story is about four men who steal a mysterious package for a client. Then zombies start to appear. Now they must work to stay alive from both zombies and people as they try to the package to their client so they can get paid.

Contributing can get you Zombie Highway postcards, pdfs, physical books, t-shirts, copies of Jason’s other books Season’s End and Suicide 5, original cover art, and a chance at being a zombie in the book. The first 250 backers (only at 96 backers of this writing) who pledge $25 or more will also get a limited print for their help.

The project has another four days and a little of $2,000 to meet their $10,000.

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Next is Imposter a 100 page graphic novel broken into four self-contained parts each in a different genre; written by James Patrick (Green Arrow, Batman), drawn by Martin Szymanksi, coves by Victor Santos (Mice Templar, Furious), and published by 21 Pulp.

Imposter is the story of how the four greatest superheroes are all really just one man. Four different heroes for any kind of threat. Now he is trying to train a replacement to take over his deception, who happens to have his own plans.

Pledge levels include ones for the book, pdfs, trading cards, t-shirt, posters, prints, sketches, get drawn into the book, plaques, mugs, pens, and more. Backers will receive each part of the series they complete it.

They have twenty-three days to raise $5,000. They are already on their way to $2,000.

Michael Knost, a Bram Stoker Award-winning editor from Chapmanville, is trying to put together an anthology of western tales with supernatural, fantasy, horror, sci-fi and other unbounded creative ideas. He tried to get a publishing house to take the idea, but they just wanted a traditional western anthology, so he has taken to Kickstarter for funds. He is looking for $16,000 and as of this writing only has $2,591. The money is to go to paying the authors, editors, and cover artist all a professional rate plus all the fees to get it printed.

He is also taking open submissions for this project as well. The more money raised will allow for more stories to be published in it.

There are some good low levels for pledges: $10 will get you an eBook version, $25 for a trade paperback version, $30 for both,
$75 for limited hardcover version, and more. At some of the higher levels you can get an online writing course, written critique of a short story, get your name used in a story or a story dedicated to you, or even the whole book dedicated to you.

The Kickstarter is open till February 17th. Even if you do not pledge try to help spread the word, since it would be cool to have such a book from the state out there.

Submission guidelines are as follows, but the Kickstarter has to succeed first.

Submissions do not open until March 1, 2014. Please do not submit before March 1, 2014.

Submissions deadline is March 1, 2015.

Publication date is October 2015.

No reprints. No simultaneous submissions.

Make submission a MS WORD document file attachment only.

Submissions will be sent via e-mail address, which will be given when project is fully funded.

A new project from writer Jason Pell and artist Ryan Howe is on Kickstarter. It is a new comic book with a very different kind of story called Suicide 5.

Suicide 5 is about five people willing to die for immortal fame. The story has the group force Mason, a shut-in sculptor, to be the judge of the suicides for originality and style. The story follows the characters through their deadly game and shows the dread and fear they all experience.

Also if you got last year’s Kickstarter Season’s End by Pell and Blake Wheeler and want more story from it, there is a short story set in the same world in the Suicide 5 book. You can get some new original art from it as well in the rewards. Blake has painted a short story that will act as a bridge to further Season’s End tales.

The goal is $8,500, with $7,000 for printing, $700 for shipping, and the rest for incidentals. Any extra funds will go to promotion and/or using a bigger publisher. So far (as of this writing) $2,085 has already been raised. You have till October 2 to donate.

Rewards for donating go like this: $15 gets you a PDF of the book, $20 for hardback copy, $25 for signed copy and sketch (limited), $30 signed copy and Zombie Highway graphic novel (limited), $31 for signed copy and copy of Woody and the Noble comic (limited), $35 gets two signed copies, $40 for signed copy with the Season’s End graphic novel or a Suicide 5 t-shirt (limited), and $165 signed copy and an original painting from the Season’s End story. Rewards are expected to be delivered on May of 2014. .

If you like comics and dark stories while helping out some locals, this is for you.

RifftTrax has a dream. To do a live riffing of Twilight screened through out the country to all their fans. Now to do this they will need to get the rights to screen Twilight in theaters. So they are asking their fans for a little help by way of Kickstarter. I bring you this as something for nerds everywhere and besides it will most likely been show in theaters in WV anyways.

RiffTrax is the brainchild of three alumi of Mystery Science Theater 3000. They create comic riffs for all kinds of movie and shorts that you can buy on DVD or as MP3s. Since 2009 they have done six live shows from Nashville that are simulcast in movie theaters all over the country. So far most of these movies have all been public domain B-movies. Now they want to do a more recent Hollywood movie for a live show. So why not the winner of their Worst Movie of All Time poll, Twilight.

They have already done a riff you can download as MP3. Now they want to approach Summit Entertainment/Lionsgate to a license of Twilight. That is why the are crowd sourceing thorugh Kickstarter. If they are unable to work out a deal for Twilight they will choose another movie from their Worst Movie List. Twilight is their first priority, but whatever happens there will be a good night of riffing in the future. The more money they get the more they can offer to get it. Any left over money from getting the license will got to production values for the show and/or bringing in celebrity guest or two.

The reward levels for donating include great things at low prices like: digital download of the live show, one of (or all) three different shorts including a re-reffed MST3K classic Mr. B, Natural, full length RiffTrax Mp3 of your choice, digital signed reherasal script copy, thank you photo of the crew, view the planning session online, signed poster, t-shirt, your name or face onscreen during the show, or even attend the show as a VIP guest. All the $200-$2,000 levels sold out so fast they went back and added some new ones. All the lower prices award levels are unlimited so do not worry about it.

Now when I said they needed help, it was kind of not that dire. Within one day of starting this they reached their original goal of $55,000. As of this writing they have raised $194,058. Let’s see if we can hit a new high for Kickstarter with this. There is still 22 days left on it. The show is planned for this August. Now on to a few notes about Kickstater.

When you pledge money to a Kickstarter project the money will not be collect till the end of the projects time limit and then only if it has met its goal. You can donate as much money as you want to an project, but to recieve a reward level you must give at least that much and secify which level you want.